


the flame can die out, but the memory of warmth lives on

by bonafied



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: (unfortunately), Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Memories, but not necessarily an awful ending either, i hope i can tug at your heartstrings, it's yet another grieving fic, no happy ending, this was written with little to no planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-07 17:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13439415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonafied/pseuds/bonafied
Summary: todd knew why neil had to do it, but he didn't understand. on some level, the logic was there and he could explain what led up to it. a deeper part of his mind, however- the same place wherein he'd pulled out the sweaty toothed madman, begged the question: weren't there any other options? could neil not have chosen something else? could he not have run away, or ask for help?or, todd's recollection of how things used to be, and his understanding of how things are now.





	the flame can die out, but the memory of warmth lives on

todd knew why neil had to do it; he felt trapped, and he made his great escape. there was nothing more to the act, and nobody should take the matter personally.

gruesomely enough, a thousand  _should nots_ can't hold a candle to a single  _did._

todd knew why neil had to do it, but he didn't understand. on some level, the logic was there and he could explain what led up to it. a deeper part of his mind, however- the same place wherein he'd pulled out the sweaty toothed madman, begged the question: weren't there any other options? could neil not have chosen something else? could he not have run away, or asked for help?

if he could have, todd was certain that neil didn't know. the soft resignation that his face had held the last time they saw one another was enough proof of that. it was as if in that moment, he had already decided. as he was still being cheered on by his friends whilst being dragged away to mr. perry's car, he very well might have been making a plan.

or maybe not.

todd thought about these things a great deal. it was the worst when nighttime rolled around, and one might imagine why.

their room was fifty percent less occupied. now, it was just todd's room with which he shared with nobody. before neil, he would have been enamored by the idea of his own space. neil changed that, the stupid bastard. he changed everything, brought it all to life, then disappeared forever. that was his final way of turning todd's world upside down.

this night was just like the previous, and the one before that, and the one before that, and...

neil's bed was of the exact same make as todd's, identical for all intents and purposes. todd would insist that this wasn't so and that neil's bed held a strange, poignant sense of comfort. the mattress was more welcoming, the pillows were more sympathetic. of course, this wasn't true. he was only attaching a personality of someone he missed to something inanimate.

that didn't keep him from sleeping in neil's bed every night. it wasn't a new happening, even before neil had killed himself. there were many times that neil, in a state of complete and utter panic, had asked that todd come sleep with him. todd could never say no to that tremulous voice and always, always filled the request. then, he just started asking. "no particular reason," neil would say when todd asked why. this led to a point where it was an unspoken rule that neither of them would sleep in an empty bed if they could help it.

but neil wasn't very good at following rules, was he?

no, and that was why todd was curled up in his dead friend's bed, enveloped by his dead friend's blankets and resting his head on his dead friend's pillows. because neil couldn't follow rules.

the bed hardly fit just him, and todd only realized this recently. how they'd managed to squeeze two people onto it was a mystery to him. but no, it really wasn't. the trick was to sleep so close, so entangled with one another that they were practically one in the same; an amalgamate of suffering poets. to want to feel the warmth of each other's bodies so dearly that they refused to let go no matter how awkward, how unconventional their positioning was.

todd remembered those nights as he laid in neil's bed, feeling sick to his stomach about how easily he could stretch his legs and move about because he didn't have to worry about disturbing another person. god, he missed having to adjust himself carefully so as not to wake neil.

those peaceful nights where they slept contently weren't individually memorable. they were powerful as a whole, though. nights so peaceful that they didn't have to think about it, or anything else for that matter.

something that did stick out to todd after all this time, a certain night, was the first time neil requested that he join him in bed.

* * *

_he wouldn't describe the sound as weeping, but it just as potent for making his chest ache._

_todd could hear neil trying his damnedest to quiet himself, cutting off  potential sobs with a sharp inhale. he believed in respecting people's privacy at all costs, because he knew that's what he preferred. neil was not as conscious of the concept, not as familiar, so todd sucked it up and said something._

_"you okay?" he'd whispered from the other side of the room. almost instantaneously, neil silenced himself. todd was about to ask a second time before he did get a reply._

_"i'm alive, aren't i?" and todd heard the forced humor in his tone. the tone, which was just thinly veiled, raw miserableness._

_"i didn't ask that," todd said firmly. he wouldn't let neil get away with brushing things off. "i asked if you were okay."_

_there was a long pause following the statement, and todd was patient the entire time he waited for a response. if he could last long enough, neil would fess up. that's all there was to it._

_"not very."_

_another period of quiet as todd tried to think of what to say. luckily, neil spoke up again and saved him from risking sounding like a goddamn idiot._

_"could you come over here? please?"_

_and he did. todd tried to just sit at the edge of the bed, but of course, neil wasn't satisfied with just that. he took as much as he could get, sucking the marrow out of life this time around by getting him to crawl under the covers next to him._

_neil held todd and vice versa, so they were both facing one another. the gentle moonlight illuminated neil's face. todd had never seen iridescent tears before._

_"d-do you want to talk?" whether or not neil would was a toss up; the guarantee of his unpredictability was his only predictable trait. one big oxymoron._

_"i'd rather die." and he smiled after that as if he had the right to look that sweet and vulnerable in front of todd. as if he had the right to inspire poetic feelings inside him._

_neil fell asleep before todd, exhausted from crying and thinking. they didn't talk, because god forbid neil die._

* * *

it wasn't always so melancholy. there were days where neil would shine so brightly that he brought light to everything and everybody he touched. he wasn't selfish; he made sure that his good days reached to all who were with him. he made them everyone else's good days, too.

todd felt like he could rightfully say that it brought him the most joy, because he had neil for more time than anyone else did. they shared time with him during study sessions, dead poets meetings, but they weren't his roommate. they didn't see him working on chemistry assignments at three am, dozing off every so often until his head hit the desk, waking him up again. they didn't hear his excited whispers when he just couldn't contain himself, or the fragile sound of how he cried. they didn't feel the heat of him against them like todd did, and he knew this because neil told him so.

* * *

" _you're so important to me," neil had said one night. just like that, with no preface, no warning. todd had been on the verge of falling asleep at the time, but the proclamation was just enough to keep his consciousness from slipping._

_"how's that?"_

_neil had been so dumbfounded by the question. perplexed, mind boggled, utterly and completely confused. later, todd would realize this was because neil thought it was the most obvious thing._

_"you're my best friend," neil insisted. the way he said it almost challenged todd to try and argue with him. just try and tell neil that he was wrong and get torn a new one. "and i mean that, i really do. what on earth would i do without todd anderson?"_

_todd had assumed he could do anything without todd anderson, but as time had gone on, the notion was put to rest. it seemed like neil really needed him, and todd felt the same._

_"you'd have to find yourself someone else to practice your acting with," he suggested, grinning when that elicited a theatrical groan from neil's end._

_"todd, i could never. there's no replacing the top of the line, is there?"_

_neil could just say anything he wanted to, it seemed._

_"i'm top of the line, huh?" todd asked, clearly skeptical. neil said a great many things that sounded so grandiose that todd couldn't tell how much of it was true._

_"of course you are-!"_

_todd had to shush him because neil always got loud when he was passionate. he wasn't letting him wake everybody up and get chided for being all over another boy._

_"sorry," neil said, lowering his tone like todd wanted him to. "it's just that i thought it was common sense."_

_"maybe we're both top of the line." todd could live with that. neil had silently made todd believe he was something special, just maybe. along with mr. keating's encouragement, neil always built todd up whenever the opportunity presented itself._

_"yeah, maybe," neil agreed. "just wait 'til we're out of hell-ton; we're gonna rule the world."_

_"let's cross that bridge when we get to it."_

* * *

the pillows and sheets of the bed that used to be neil's didn't feel like him anymore. anything that neil touched was distinctly his, and you could see him in it. todd supposed that meant he could only see neil in a coffin now. dead people had no possessions; technically, the coffin wasn't even neil's, nor was the dirt surrounding it, or the clothes they'd buried him in.

todd never got to attend the funeral. none of the poets had been able to. nuwanda had said that neil would have understood, but admitted that he probably would have liked for them to be there. todd appreciated nuwanda's honesty, though it stung.

he didn't want to think about neil laying in the ground six feet under, so it was naturally the one thing he was fixating on as he tried to fall asleep.

apparently, he hadn't been buried straight away. for reasons unknown to todd, there had been a considerable stretch of time between neil's death and the burial. 

 _"what do they do with the body, then?"_ he'd asked meeks.

meeks said that it was kept in a sort of refrigerator. todd promptly felt sick and had to excuse himself. 

and now, he laid in bed, thinking more in depth about that mental image. todd didn't know what bodies looked like over time, he didn't know how fast or slow they decayed, so all he could visualize was neil propped up against a wall, looking very much like he did when he was alive, only sleeping. it didn't sit well with him, giving him the visceral response to be upset that they kept them in there where he might get cold.

but it was alright, because he was supposed to be cold. he stopped breathing, grew cold, and died.

* * *

  _gather ye rosebuds while ye may._

 it crept later and later into the night, and todd still couldn't stop thinking long enough for him to rest.

get what you want while you still can. that's all it meant when he took away the prose. 

neil had tried dearly to gather his rosebuds, earnestly clutching at any and every chance he got that might make him feel happy. he got puck, a rosebud he'd longed for for quite some time, and he got nothing else. he couldn't see any more roses ahead, nothing to gather.

todd wondered that perhaps if he'd told neil that he was his rosebud, he would have stayed.

but of course, that hadn't been the problem. if there was anything todd could have done, neil would still be alive, because todd would have done anything. it hadn't mattered how much he'd wanted to help. there was, and always would have been, nothing he could've done.

* * *

_"i'm kind of nervous about the play tomorrow."_

_"how come?"_

_"it's an excited kind of nervous."_

_todd didn't know what on earth that meant._

_"you'll do great and you know it."_

_neil smiled at that, looking up to their bedroom ceiling as they laid adjacent to each other on his bed._

_"i think i will. i wanted it so much."_

_"more than anybody else."_

_"yeah, way more."_

_a silent period passed until neil spoke up again._

_"hey, todd?"_

_"i'm so close to being asleep, neil. this better be good."_

_"you'll come to the play, right? and you'll celebrate with me?"_

_"sure, i'll do that. now please, for the love of god, let me sleep."_

* * *

as it turns out, nights were just as sleepless without neil as they were with.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a mess!
> 
> please Please kik me (sp00ky_mulder) or message me on tumblr (gendergenius)
> 
> i want nothing more than to talk about these boys. i don't care how awkward you think your introduction will be or how boring you think you are. i am begging you


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